Constellations

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"Constellations." //Kids InfoBits Presents: Astronomy//. Gale, 2008. Reproduced in Kids InfoBits. Detroit: Gale, 2012. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/KidsInfoBits "http:\\spaceplace.nasa.gov\starfinder3\ Constellations." //Astronomy & Space: From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch//. Gale, 2007. //Gale Science In Context//. Web. 12 Mar. 2012. [] Constellation." //Gale Encyclopedia of Science//. Ed. K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner. 4th ed. Detroit: Gale Group, 2008. //Discovering Collection//. Gale. Middle School. 12 Mar. 2012 .
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 * Constellations**

A constellation is a group of stars that forms a pattern. Grouping stars together makes them easy to identify. The constellations were invented, not discovered, in ancient times. Shepherds, farmers, and sailors gave names to groups of stars they could see. Often, they named these star patterns after Greek or Roman gods, animals, and objects. Greek, Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian astronomers documented these patterns on star maps. The constellations are easy-to-remember patterns of stars. On a really dark night, you can see about 1,000 to 1,500 stars. Trying to tell which star is which can be difficult. But if you know which stars are located in the constellation Orion, for example, it is easy to find those stars. Just look for the constellation. In 1929 the International Astronomical Union defined the 88 official constellations that exist today. Star maps are divided into these groups for easy identification. Today every star in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere has been identified with a constellation. Constellations seem to change their positions in the sky as each hour passes. This is because the earth spins on its axis. The constellations also seem to change their positions with the seasons. This is due to the rotation of the earth around the sun. What we see depends on what time of year it is. In the United States, no one sees Orion on the 4th of July or Scorpio on Christmas Eve. Only from the equator can all of the constellations in the sky be seen.

The hunter Orion is one of the oldest and most recognizable constellations in the Northern Hemisphere. Hydra is the longest constellation in the sky. It is named after a horrible serpent-like monster with several heads. There is also a constellation named after Hercules, the hero that slew the hydra in Greek mythology. Sirius, the brightest of all known stars, is located in the Canis Major, or Big Dog, constellation. The Big Dipper is part of the Ursus Major, or Big Bear, star group, and the Little Dipper is part of the Ursus Minor, or Little Bear, constellation.

Novice stargazers are often taught that the pattern of stars in a constellation resembles an animal or a person engaged in some activity. For example, Sagittarius is supposed to be an archer, Ursa Major a large bear, and Ursa Minor a small bear. However, most people locate Sagittarius by looking for a group of stars that resemble an old-fashioned coffee pot. Ursa Major is more commonly seen as a Big Dipper and Ursa Minor as a Little Dipper. In fact, it is more likely that ancient stargazers named constellations to honor people, objects, or animals that were a part of their mythology, not because they thought the pattern resembled the honoree.

The first myth about the stars in the night sky probably came from the Chinese 5,000 years ago. They described stars as a heavenly river. The two brightest stars lived on either side of the river. They were known as Vega, a princess who wove beautiful clothes, and Altair, a herdsman. One night each year, a bridge of birds would span the river, allowing Vega and Altair to meet.

We now know that stars are not princesses, herdsmen, gods, or goddesses, but vast clumps of hydrogen gas and dust that exist in space millions of miles (kilometers) away. Scientists who study the positions, motions, and composition of stars, planets and other objects in space are known as astronomers. Ancient people were intrigued by what we now call the Milky Way. What was this band of light that stretched across the skies, they wondered. According to Greek legend, droplets of milk spilt upwards when Juno breastfed the infant Hercules. That's why this light became known as the Milky Way. Democritus, a Greek philosopher, realized the truth in the fifth century B.C. He suggested that countless stars, too faint to be seen individually, make up the Milky Way. In 1609, when the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) focused the telescope he had made, the immense number of stars he saw staggered him. Galileo confirmed that the Milky Way is made up of innumerable stars grouped in clusters.If we count all the traditional constellations, there are 13 in the zodiac, not 12.

Constellations A constellation is one of eighty-eight groups of stars in the sky, named for mythological beings. Although some constellations may resemble the animals or people they are named for, others were merely named in honor of those figures. Some of the more commonly known ones are Orion (in the shape of a hunter), Crux (a cross), and Leo (a lion). The constellations encompass the entire celestial sphere, the imaginary sphere that surrounds Earth. The celestial sphere provides a visual surface on which scientists can plot the stars and other objects in space and chart their apparent movement caused by Earth's rotation. People can see many of the constellations on any clear night. The particular constellations that are visible depends on where in the world a person is located, along with the time of year and the time of night. As Earth makes its daily rotation about its axis and its yearly revolution around the Sun, the celestial sphere appears to shift, and different constellations come into view. Originally the constellations had no fixed boundaries. It was not until 1930 that the International Astronomical Union (IAU) defined limits for the constellations that are still accepted today. These boundaries are imaginary lines, running north-south and east-west across the entire celestial sphere, so that every point in the sky belongs to some constellation or another. A constellation does not represent a scientific grouping of objects. Two objects in the same constellation may or may not have anything in common or any influence on one another. They may even be separated by a greater distance than objects in different constellations. To say that a particular star, planet, or nebula (cloud of gas and dust) is located "within" a given constellation does not take into account the actual distance of that object from Earth or from any other object in the constellation--it merely means that it can be found by looking in one general area in the sky, in relation to Earth.

The westward movement of the constellations is the result of Earth's motion along its orbit about the sun. With each passing day and month, humans see a different part of the celestial sphere at night. From this frame of reference, on a planet with a tilted axis, the sun, moon, and planets follow a path along the celestial sphere called the ecliptic, which makes an angle of 23.5° with the celestial equator. As the sun moves along the ecliptic, it passes through 12 constellations, which ancient astronomers referred to as the Signs of the Zodiac—Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Libra, Scorpius, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. The planets also move along the ecliptic, but because they are much closer to the Earth than the stars, their paths change with respect to the constellations. These wanderers, which is what the ancients called the planets, led to astrology—the belief that the motion of the sun, moon, and planets along the zodiac has some influence on human destiny. While there is no evidence to support such belief, the pseudoscience of astrology led to the careful observations of early astronomers.